Honey Butter Chips
Honey Butter Chips (허니버터칩) is a brand of fried potato chips manufactured by Haitai Calbee and sold in South Korea. The chips were first available in August 2014, and they are renowned for their rise to popularity through SNS viral marketing from late 2014 to early 2015. The company behind this creation was Korean Haitai in a joint effort with Japanese snack manufacturer Calbee. The Honey Butter Craze began in 2015 and has grown in popularity.
Haitai-Calbee Joint Ventures
Calbee previously produced a Honey Butter Chip in 2012 for the Japanese market. Calbee set up a joint venture with Haiti and expanded its snack market to Korea in order to increase profits in the Japanese snack market.[1]
Honey Butter Craze
Although limited in production and supply, this product has taken over the Korean market. To meet the demand, Haitai-Calbee plans to build a factory in South Korea. This new facility is set to begin operation in early 2016.[2]
Celebrity Influence
The Honey Butter Craze rose exponentially when Korean celebrities started endorsing the product. K-pop stars such as Sooyoung of Girls' Generation, Siwon of Super Junior, and T-ara's Hyomin began posing in selfies with gilded Honey Butter bags propped beside their cheeks and posting the pictures online. Actress So Yoo-Jin posted a picture of a bag on her Instagram. A popular news broadcaster for KBS even proclaimed that she was “laughing and crying over one bag of chips” and uploaded a picture of herself holding up the famously elusive golden yellow bag. [3] On the May 23rd broadcast of MBC's My Little Television, rock singer Jung Joon Young reviewed and compared many types of honey butter flavored snacks in the Korean snack market.[4]
Line Extensions
- Jagabee Honey Mild
- Honey butter potato fries created by Haitai-Calbee
- Honey Tong Tong
- Ridged triangle potato chips created by Haitai (not joint with Calbee) after the viral popularity of Honey Butter Chips
Competitor Products
- NongShim "Sumi Potato Chips"
- Due to the limited manufacturing of the original Honey Butter Chips, the product became increasingly difficult to find, prompting South Korean food manufacturer NongShim to release their own similar product in mass volumes. With the widespread availability of NongShim's chips, Sumi Potato Chips overtook Honey Butter Chips in sales.[5]
- Lotte "Honey Drunken Potato Chips" (꿀먹은 감자칩)
References
- ↑ http://www.potatopro.com/news/2011/calbee-and-haitai-form-joint-venture-produce-chips-south-korea
- ↑ http://www.potatopro.com/news/2015/haitai-calbee-build-snack-factory-south-korea-meet-soaring-demand
- ↑ http://munchies.vice.com/articles/korean-honey-butter-chip-hysteria-has-created-a-snack-black-market
- ↑ http://bntnews.hankyung.com/apps/news?popup=0&nid=04&c1=04&c2=04&c3=00&nkey=201505231519083&mode=sub_view
- ↑ http://www.koreatimesus.com/nongshim-outdoes-original-honey-butter-chips/